Region

Since July 9th, a new state, South Sudan, came to join the international community. As usual, mainstream media have both under-reported and under-informed about it. This is a standard practice–mainstream media mostly ‘tells about bleeding events such as wars and deadly attacks. But, what do we know about this new state?

They do not apply the Mexican joke “I kill people for money; but you, my best friend, I will kill you for nothing!”. They are the private “warriors” who always charge for their services. Powerful militaries, key government agencies, large corporations and business and even individuals are increasingly outsourcing aspects of their security to private companies,

by Carrie Humphries

This year marks the 7th Annual Nonviolence Festival Day in the Park. I remember a few years ago going to the event (hosted by the Waterloo Region chapter of Nonviolence organization) and it poured. Yes, it rained for what seemed like forever. But it didn’t stop the day. The festival, in all its soaked glory, continued on while people danced in the rain.

Manners and customs are the indigenous peoples´ own forms of self-government and regulatory systems, which have been preserved since pre-colonial times, and that govern the lives of these peoples but some women from these native communities are demanding changes to these ancient practices they say infringe on their rights as people.

The Network of Children’s Rights in Mexico (Redim) urged the governor of the northern state of Chihuahua, Cesar Duarte Jaquez, to investigate the police operatives of forced removal of the street population in Juárez. Redim highlighted that these evacuations amount to a practice of “social cleansing” that violate the Mexican constitution.

Reporters Without Borders condemns local TV reporter Adan Benítez’s murder in the northern port city of La Ceiba (the capital of Atlántida department) on 4 July. Employed by two local stations, 45TV and Teleceiba Canal 7, he was the second journalist to be murdered in Honduras in the past two months.

Throughout the year devoted by the UN to African descendants in the world, the Latin American region takes on the historic duty of tackling surviving open or veiled discrimination. Some 150 million African descendants, 30 percent of the Latin American and Caribbean population, suffer the consequences of disproportionate poverty and exclusion.

Tomorrow, Palestinians will commemorate the seven year anniversary of the International Court of Justices (ICJ) ruling that the Israeli built wall and settlements in the Occupied Territories were against International law and International human rights and called for the dismantling of the wall. The Israeli government has ignored these calls repeatedly.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Egypt on Friday to defend the uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, directing their anger at the new military rulers over the slow pace of reform. In the capital, flag-waving protesters packed Tahrir Square, epicentre of the protests that ousted Mubarak in February, after a mass weekly Muslim prayer service.

The UN says that rape is used as a weapon of war, and as a mean of terror to ensure the enslave-ment of civilians. Inspite of this clear definition of such horrific crime, the UN now says that the rapes of hundreds of people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo“could be considered crimes against humanity and war crimes.”